AT&T’s bills are so confusing they need videos to explain them

Automatically generated, the new video bills give subscribers narrated line-by-line tours of their monthly bills, simplifying things like one-time charges (which people tend to be the most confused by) and other bill items.

AT&T has offered the feature to more of its customers over the past few weeks, and aims to have it everywhere by early next year. According to AT&T VP John Donovan, people seem to like it so far.

While the idea is well-intentioned, wouldn’t the smarter (and probably cheaper) idea have been to simply make the bills themselves easier to understand? If AT&T’s bills are so confusing that they need videos to explain then, then it’s clear that the bills are too complicated to begin with. Either that or the average AT&T subscriber is really, really dumb.

In any case, its likely that rival carriers are now hustling to announcing similar systems, so don’t expect this sort of thing to go away any time soon.